Sudanese Woman Flogged Under Islamic Law for Riding in Car

A video has surfaced online showing Sudanese police repeatedly hitting a woman with a whip. Judging by the accent of those speaking in the video, it was shot in the region of the capital Khartoum.

The incident takes place in a courtyard – possibly at a courthouse – with a crowd of bystanders watching on. A police officer whips a woman seated cross-legged and facing a wall, all while the person filming and another person next to them giggle. At 39 seconds, an officer tells the woman, called Halima: “This is so you don’t get into cars anymore”. An Observer in Sudan who has watched the video says it is not unusual for a woman to be punished with lashes if she is found in a car with a man who isn’t from her immediate family (such as a husband, a father, or a brother).

Punishing women with lashes was written into law following the 1989 coup d’état and the arrival of Omar al-Bashir to power. However, this common practice only started attracting the international media’s attention in 2009, when journalist Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein was sentenced to flogging for wearing trousers.

It would be so awful if any of the bans on Islamic Law passed by states weren’t immediately struck down by Federal judges who seem very enthusiastic about flogging women for riding in cars.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st century.

Veracious_one

How’s that Islam working for you girl???

Aizino Smith

I thought Hind bint Utbah and some other women among the early Muslims rode horses.